DxO Labs unveils Optics Pro 8 with Smart Lighting

DxO Labs has announced DxO Optics Pro 8, a major update of its image processing tool incorporating 'DxO Smart Lighting.' The company's Smart Lighting tool influences both image brightness and contrast using a single slider and will attempt to recover both highlight and shadow detail. Meanwhile a selective tone tool makes it easy to apply different changes to the highlight, mid-tone and shadow regions of an image.The software also allows the configuration of multiple output options. It also gains more lens/body optical correction profiles, with DxO aiming to double the current 10,000 combinations by the end of 2013. The software comes with the customary introductory pricing valid until November 15th.

Software will be available on October 29, 2012 at a 33% discount through November 15th

October 24, 2012 - DxO Labs announces the October 29th availability of DxO Optics Pro 8, a major new release of its image quality processing software of reference for all demanding photographers. Available for both Mac and Windows, DxO Optics Pro 8 provides the best tool for automatically adjusting contrast and light, the most advanced optical corrections, and even finer and more precise color management. Its enhanced performance and improved interface deliver a better user experience.

DxO Optics Pro is based on a unique approach consisting of extensive camera and lens calibrations in DxO Labs' laboratories. The software integrates several powerful tools delivering automatic RAW and JPEG image processing for both amateur photographers and experts: optical and geometrical corrections, exposure and contrast, noise reduction, and color and detail preservation.

DxO Optics Pro's many presets allow photographers to process images according to their own taste, getting in just a few cliks the best out of their photos, whatever the shooting conditions.

DxO Smart Lighting: Mastering the light with one slider

New DxO Smart Lighting brightens up photos by optimizing contrast and lighting quickly and efficiently. This exclusive DxO Labs technology intelligently adapts to image content and allows users to easily adjust image contrast using a single slider. DxO Smart Lighting automatically recovers details both in highlights and shadows under even the most extreme shooting conditions.

For more advanced users, DxO Optics Pro 8 offers a new Selective tone tool that allows them to apply precise corrections separately to highlights, midtones, and dark zones.

Brilliant and fully textured colors

The Protection of saturated colors tool can restore a significant number of details and rich textures hidden in areas of vivid or saturated color that can appear flatly uniform to the eye.

DxO Optics Pro 8 automatically applies the color rendering settings chosen by the photographer while precisely taking into account the current image content. Textures in vivid colors reappear, revealing all the details in the image.

Exceptional optical corrections: Even more supported lenses

Flaws in photos are specific to the combination of lens and camera used. DxO Labs has measured nearly 10,000 combinations to provide the specific corrections required for each camera.

Developed in DxO Labs' laboratory using an exclusive calibration process, DxO Optics Modules contain tens of thousands of data about the inner characteristics and flaws of each camera and lens. This unique and world exclusive database allows DxO Optics Pro to automatically correct all optical flaws with an unrivaled level of quality, for both RAW and JPEG images, including distortion, vignetting, chromatic aberrations, and lens softness.

The Lens softness tool, also based on DxO Optics Modules, automatically boosts lens resolution by homogenizing sharpness across the field. Optimized in DxO Optics Pro 8, the tool gives photographers extremely sharp images from the center of the image right out to the edges, even when the settings are pushed to high levels.

The opening of a new laboratory in Seattle has reinforced DxO Labs' measurement and calibration capacity. Now with six laboratories located in both Europe and the United States, DxO Labs has set a goal of providing 20,000 available DxO Optics Modules by the end of 2013.

A smoother user experience: Regrouping features and Retina screen optimization

DxO Labs has extensively revised the DxO Optics Pro 8 interface for more user comfort. The most commonly used functions have been regrouped to offer photographers easier visibility and handling.

A specific workspace brings together the most important and common operations such as white balance, color and contrast adjustment, and exposure compensation. Similarly, many advanced tools have been more logically reorganized in different palettes.

DxO Optics Pro 8's Mac interface has been entirely redesigned to take advantage of all the visual quality offered by Retina screens. Photographers can now enjoy unprecedented displayed details in their images!

Faster and truer viewing: A more efficient display and workflow

Thumbnails now display in real time the current state of the photo, thanks to live preview. The user can now instantly figure out if a photo is the original one or the working version.

To improve workflow further, now every photo once opened in DxO Optics Pro instantaneously loads, even after closing and reopening the application - a real time-saver.

New tools: Print module and new Output settings options

DxO Optics Pro 8 now includes a new integrated print module allowing photographers to directly print RAW or JPEG images on the fly as they preview them. Different print modes and layout options are available, from contact sheet to full page printing.

As a part of the new Output settings options, users can now also adjust the destination and size and choose among several resampling solutions.

Availability and special introductory offer

The Standard and Elite editions of DxO Optics Pro 8 for Mac and Windows will be available on October 29, 2012, in the DxO Labs online store (shop.dxo.com), and at photo resellers during November, at a special introductory discount valid until November 15, 2012:

Photographers who have purchased a DxO Optics Pro 7 license on or after September 1, 2012 are eligible for a free upgrade to version 8. Other users can take advantage of a special discount on all upgrades from now until November 15, 2012, directly from their customer account.

Comments

This may be an old thread, and the last message a month ago, but "Sandy Fleischberg" you are hilarious! You're right, I have never EVER seen a retail store extend their promotions. I use multiple software programs on my computer and I have seen stuff like that all the time. I'm sorry you have never found any other company that extends promotions. Can you please let me know so that I can make sure I buy from a company that doesn't do this??

Better noise control, better lighting tool. Long time user, I too will part with $49 for the upgrade for DxO Pro 8. However, I will probably not fork out the $99 upgrade for Phase One Capture One Pro 7, also just announced.

I upgraded from my v.7 to the new v.8: better interface, better noise control on high ISO pics, better automatic setup, undock image browser is great for two monitors, performance looks the same. No serious bugs so far (great surprise!).

I am an user since version 3 and except for the lauching of 5.0 version, DxO consistently has presented an increasing better performance, resources and user interface.

DxO is my main raw developer and for most cases it is the best one (I have also installed NX2 and ACR) except for portraits I prefer NX2 (the v.8 is significantlly better on this than v.7 but NX2 maintains the edge).

i though dxo did like canon, the lower the version number the higher the settings and options... :'( but with dxo8 for the first time i feel happy with an upgrade. speed is better (nothing stellar) the new tools for light are pretty impressive and better now than LR.the ui also improves a little, for example we can at last reset a value to its default with a double clic(like in LR)

multi point color balance isn't back for pc. why?

first opening of a big directory makes dxo's explorer uber laggy.

al in all good job dxo, far from perfect but it now looks like a real product and not just a beta. a little mask layer tool or a masking brush like LR would make it almost complete and remove the need of photoshop/lightroom for 99/100 of my pics.

It is a worthwhile upgrade. When I chose Pro 7 over Lr4, I missed the separate highlights, midtones, shadows and blacks controls in Lr4, and now DxO offers them and to great effect too. Fiddling with exposure compensation just wasn't enough to deal with clipped highlights, but now that issue is fixed. The overall ergonomy and speed seem to be improved too, and the new contrast control is excellent too. It's as if Pro 8 blended DxO and Lr4's best characteristics. Way to go DxO!

I resigned from using DxO two years ago. Having Sony A700 or A900 raw files I have 3-4 stops more in shadows when I use ACR. If I lift shadows in ACR, they keep proper colours, bit if I do it in Dxo, it lifts only green cast. Useless crap!

Funny, they compare sensors and cameras using such a weak engine. When the engine is poor, the tool is useless. So I don't believe their comparisons.

Referring to v6, the main reason I use DxO is its deconvolution image sharpening, especially with the Tamron 18 - 250mm and 18 - 270 PZD zoom lenses - it turns these into really good lenses, improving definition and contrast significantly. This function alone makes it worth the money.

Lens distortion corrections are are a strength and with super zooms, make quite a difference as well.

The automated processing is useful as well but fine tuning colour adjustment takes a lot of practice and I'm still not happy with how it manages shades of red.

Also it does not produce the best raw conversion contrary to what some say - it is inclined to show jagged edges. Noise reduction also is clearly not as good as that in LR, when one does an A-B comparison - LR has a killer Chroma noise adjustment, by way of comparison.

I prefer the speed and the highlight recovery function of LR as well, so v8 will have to pull a few rabbits out of its hat to justify an upgrade.

I have been using DXO for many years. I loved version 6 but think that version 7 was quite a few steps backwards. They had removed some features that were very important to me, but I had no choice but to upgrade in order to get support for my Canon 5DIII. While version 7 is workable I am less productive with it than I was with version 6. Besides the loss of some features, version 7 is very sluggish to display changes when you move a slider.

I prefer to use the "project" organizational feature but it now takes more steps to add images to a project. But what is much worse is when adding photos to a project, it no longer stores a check mark on them. So when you look through a large folder of raw images it is very hard to know which have been added to the project and which haven't.

Now I hope that version 8 truly is an improvement but I doubt they have added back the things they took away with 7.

Having used Optics Pro 7 for almost a year and gotten excellent results with it, I'm definetely looking forward to V8. I just hope they fixed the program's habit of crashing every now and then when processing pictures.

I just wonder, taking in account that LR4 is cheaper than DxO and it doesn't come in two versions (but one covers all cameras), how does that affect Optics Pro's sales in general?

If I could only get a lens profile for my Minolta 35-70mm f/4, all my lenses would be covered and I'd be delighted.

Some of the new / updated features look like real improvements (Smart Lighting, enhanced detail / sharpening, etc.) - I've recently re-instated DxO 7.x in my workflow, and look forward to the new version :)

There is no comparison for speed, LR works a lot faster. DXO refuses (so far) to do autohide panels or one click zoom, two features of LR which speed things up considerably. Having to pull down a menu to click off the image browser every time is yet another annoyance. So basically, DXO for severe wide angle distortion fixing/"lens softness," LR/PS for everything else. Reveilliez vous, DXO!

Have both, and LR4 blows DxO away in terms of speed on my quad core. Liking LR4 more all the time. DxO is great if you have lenses in the profiles. Their lens-softness tools really do some great sharpening.

I like the LR4 interface better as well. The clunky DOTNET user interface on DxO was a huge mistake.

Hi, nekrosoft13.What Reilly and SRT201 mentioned about speed is true, but DxO's automatic corrections mitigate that gap somewhat. DxO had perfectible highlight correction, whereas Lr4 has a separate highlight correction slider, which works remarkably well, but DxO seems to have addressed this issue with v8. DxO's noise reduction, distortion and chromatic aberration correction, on the other hand, are much better than Lr4's. I tried both programmes before buying and it was very hard to decide; ultimately DxO gave me better results and I ended up buying it, but it was a tough call.My advice? Download the demo versions of both and find out for yourself which one suits you - and your equipment - better. Whatever your choice, you'll end up with a very powerful editing software. You may even use DxO's geometry correction and then send the files to Lr4 (DxO gives you that option) for lighting and colour adjustment. That's what I'd have done if I had the money and a more powerful computer.

Interesting. Looking forward to testing the V8. I have been using DXO forever as part as my workflow.

The upgrade is not yet available on my customer account.

Yes- it's slow (both in setting the edits and in processing with 11 seconds per Canon 5d2 raw file), unfriendly, even crashes regularly (less so now) but it's the best RAW converter I've seen and my go-to choice for every pro shoot.